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Having low literacy skills could impact everything from reading a newspaper and balancing a checkbook to wise consumer decisions and job advancement. This study estimates adult literacy measures for Cuyahoga County, Ohio and its municipalities. It is also important to have a sense of how many children are at risk for developing literacy problems as adults, and these estimates are also generated. Finally, many efforts are already underway in communities across the county to try to help those who do struggle with literacy issues. The last portion of the research analyzes the distribution of literacy service providers. Appended are: (1) Difficulty Values of Selected Tasks Along the Prose, Document, and Quantitative Literacy Scales; (2) Reference Map for Cleveland Neighborhoods, Inner-Ring Suburbs, and Outer-Ring Suburbs; (3) Mean Literacy Proficiencies by Cleveland Neighborhood and Suburban Municipality, 1990 vs. 2000; (4) Percent at Level 1 Literacy by Cleveland Neighborhood and Suburban Municipality, 1990 vs. 2000; (5) Percent at Level 1 or Level 2 Literacy by Cleveland Neighborhood and Suburban Municipality, 1990 vs. 2000; (6) Census Variables Used to Update Reder's Mathematical Literacy Models; (7) Other Regional Literacy Measurements and Comparisons between Cleveland and Other Ohio Cities (Based on results from Jack Miller's Study); (8) Distribution of Births to Mothers Who Did Not Have a High School Degree, 1998-2002; (9) Percentage of 4th Graders and 9th Graders who Passed the Proficiency Tests; (10) Educational Attainment for the Civilian Youth Population Aged 16-19 by Suburban Municipality and Cleveland Neighborhood, 2000; and (11) Estimated Number of Adults and Children with Possible Literacy Problems. (Contains 17 tables, 23 figures and 45 footnotes.) [This paper was prepared for The Greater Cleveland Literacy Collaborative.]

The growing recognition that place matters has led to numerous foundation- and government-sponsored initiatives that address the needs of disadvantaged neighborhoods and families in tandem. Fundamental to these people-based and place-based strategies is the assumption that residents are both the beneficiaries and the cocreators of improvements in their neighborhoods and the systems that serve them. However, despite the centrality of place in these community initiatives, defining neighborhoods as they are experienced by residents has proven challenging. This paper demonstrates how a household survey can be used to ascertain residents’ views of the place they refer to as their neighborhood. The study uses data from the Making Connections (MC) target areas in 10 cities. A representative sample of households were asked the name of their neighborhoods and instructed on how to draw maps of their neighborhoods as they viewed them. GIS tools were used to uncover spaces within the MC target areas that residents included in their definitions of neighborhood as well as spaces that seemed to fall outside their collective definitions. The study revealed several overlapping areas that constituted resident-defined neighborhoods within most Making Connections target areas. The paper discusses the implications of this diversity of resident neighborhood perceptions for community change initiatives.